Enterprise​/Principal Architect – Digital Commerce & Platforms

Enterprise / Principal Architect – Digital Commerce & Experience Platforms

Note:

By applying to this position your application is automatically submitted to the following locations:
Crystal City, VA

At 2U, we are all in on purpose. We are motivated by our mission – to make learning limitless– and connected by our shared passion to deliver world-class higher education  the parent company of edX, a leading online learning platform, 2U powers thousands of higher education offerings – from free courses to full degrees. Together with our college, university, and corporate partners, we are helping accelerate careers and transform lives.

This role will define and drive the end-to-end architecture vision for rebuilding and evolving large-scale digital platforms such as edx.org and  , integrating commerce, search, marketing experiences, and LMS ecosystems. In addition to architectural leadership, this role provides technical leadership and people management for senior tech leads, offshore engineering teams, with accountability for execution, quality, and delivery outcomes.

You will operate as a technical authority and thought leader, balancing architectural rigor with real-world delivery.

We are looking for someone who has built and scaled modern web platforms, understands trade-offs deeply, and can partner closely with engineering teams to deliver.

• Own and guide the architecture vision for enterprise-scale digital experience and commerce platforms, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned to business outcomes.
• Define and govern composable, API-first architectures that integrate commerce, subscriptions, payments, search, marketing platforms, and LMS ecosystems, enabling flexibility and long-term platform evolution.
• Drive build vs. buy vs. partner decisions across the digital stack, balancing speed, cost, risk, and long-term ownership.
• Establish architectural standards and patterns across frontend, backend, and integrations, including event-driven and serverless designs on AWS, to optimize scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Set and enforce engineering and architectural standards across teams, including system design, resiliency, security, observability, data modeling, and performance optimization.

• Provide technical leadership and day-to-day direction to Tech Leads, Senior Engineers, and offshore delivery teams.
• Manage and mentor Tech Leads and/or offshore engineering and QA teams, ensuring clarity of ownership, accountability, and delivery standards.
• Partner with delivery managers and program leadership to plan capacity, staffing, and sequencing of work.
• Own technical delivery outcomes, including quality, timelines, and risk management across distributed teams.
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural guardrails across onshore and offshore teams.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and performance development of senior technical talent in partnership with Engineering leadership.
• Work closely with engineering, product, marketing, and data teams in Agile environments.
• Participate actively in PI planning, sprint reviews, and technical design forums.
• Mentor senior engineers, tech leads, and solution architects.

• 15+ of progressive experience in web engineering, solution architecture, and enterprise architecture, operating at Principal or Enterprise Architect level in large, complex organizations.
• Demonstrated ownership of architecture vision and execution for enterprise-scale digital platforms, including high-traffic websites and e-commerce systems.
• Proven experience architecting commerce, payments, and subscription platforms at scale, including integrations with external vendors and internal systems.
• Strong experience designing API-first, cloud-native architectures, including Graph
  
  QL, event-driven integrations, and distributed systems.
• Extensive experience with AWS, including serverless architectures (AWS Lambda) and No
  
  SQL data platforms (Dynamo
  
  DB), with an emphasis on scalability,…